If you’ve been hanging out here long with me, you’ll know that every year on my birthday, I’ve taken to writing a list of the corresponding number of “things” from the year I just completed that have really shaped me. Sometimes it’s silly products I discovered. Sometimes it’s things I love. Sometimes it’s things I hate. New habits. Discoveries. Achievements.

I’ll admit it. When I realized upon my husband’s birthday in June that mine was fast approaching, I had the thought of Maybe I’ll take a break this year. That list is a lot of work.

And then I thought, Are you kidding? This year, more than any year, I need to celebrate what has shaped me. Cancer isn’t going to steal that!

So without further ado, here are my 42 Things.

1. Romantasies

Last summer I began writing my first fantasy romance, aka romantasy. I eventually settled on calling it Awakened, and though it took me an entire year to write it around the many other projects I had contracted, I finished it and turned it in to my editors at WhiteCrown in June! Which means it has a release date of next June, 2025. And I’m happy to report that it already has an audio contract too! 😉 And because I was writing this new genre, I’ve spent a LOT of my reading of the last year in the genre too. So. Much. Fun.

2. SJC Forever

Right after my birthday last year, we took Xoe to St. John’s College for her freshman year. This is the college David and I went to, too, so cue allllll the memories. It has been so much fun to visit the school, to participate in Parent’s Weekend, and just to talk to Xoe about the Program and the unique life of this particular college (The Great Books School) as she goes through it. She LOVES it there, and we love seeing her come into her own at the place that so shaped us!

3. 6 Books

Okay, y’all, I usually do “x-number of books published as of this year” count on here, but instead, THIS: I turned in SIX contracted books in 2023. As in, 6. That’s a lot of books. As of my birthday, only half of them are published, but the other three will be clustered in September-November. Just look at these babies!

4. Pensacola Beach Writing Retreat

In October, my best friend Stephanie Morrill turned 40. She and her husband decided they’d each celebrate their milestone years with fun trips, so he went hiking…and Stephanie voted for a week-long destination writing retreat with me. First, a big mwa-ha-ha-ha on me reaping the benefits of her birthday trip treat. 😉 Sweet deal! She decided she’d like to go to Pensacola Beach, where her family had visited a couple times over spring breaks with their Airstream. We went in October–the weather was still warm, the Gulf was gorgeous, those white sand beaches were fantastic and uncrowded, and the writing was amazing. This was our first FULL WEEK retreat, and we weren’t entirely sure how it would go. Usually our trips are five days, and by the end of them, we’re feeling pretty drained. So we decided we’d not push too hard.

I said that…then I really wanted to finish An Honorable Deception while I was there. And I did!! We had a wonderful week of hanging out, fellowship, writing, walks on the beach, yummy food, and lots of joking and laughing. We even got to see the Blue Angels and Fat Albert flying by, and caught a few glimpses of their practice!

5. Box of Bookish Things

I am one of those people who sometimes gets an idea and just leaps in. I mean, who needs to plot and plan? 😉 I did this with an idea I had for a subscription box not of books, but of bookish things. Things like book page cupcake wrappers, book-themed notebooks, bookish mugs, bookmarks…you get the idea. I launched the idea last autumn, and though I paused it this summer while I dealt with, ahem, number 17 on my list, I’m looking forward to starting it up again when energy permits. Because this has been SO MUCH FUN. I love discovering new items each month and sharing them with my subscribers! And, yes, I also love adding the items to my own collection when there’s one left over!

6. ChocZero Orange Marmalade

Time for a random product discovery. 😉 I have long been a fan of orange marmalade, which Xoe and I refer to as “sunshine in a jar.” I’ve made my own several times and *insert chef’s kiss here. Delicious! But also full of sugar, and I’ve been making a concerted effort to cut sugar from my diet. So when I saw that ChocZero had a sugar-free marmalade, I decided to give it a try. And y’all. This stuff is delightful. As in, I ordered half a dozen jars at a go. SO GOOD. And guilt-free. And it pairs fantastically with…

7. Einkorn Flour

I had never heard of Einkorn flour until one of my Facebook friends (and fellow historical author Kimberly Duffy) posted about it, but it caught my attention. So I looked it up and discovered that Einkorn is nature’s original wheat, what they would have eaten in biblical times. It has different gluten and protein structures than modern wheat (and even other ancient grains like spelt) that make it super easy to digest. Many people who are gluten sensitive can eat einkorn without any problem. I’m not gluten sensitive, but I am interested in grains that are easy on my digestive tract, full of flavor, and whose carbs are more easily broken down. So I ordered some of this flour, and oh my goodness. It’s SO delicious! I’ve entirely given up buying bread and now just make two loaves of this at a time and pop them in the freezer, getting out 4 slices at a time. Which basically means fresh bread daily, and it has so much more flavor than anything you can buy from the store!! We are 100% in love. (I’ve been using Jovial brand–a small family company that has become the largest grower of Einkorn. Check them out here!)

8. Wavy Hair

Last August, just after my birthday, I decided to experimentally stop arguing with that one section of hair that REFUSED to be straightened properly and instead see what would happen if I embraced it. I’ve worn my hair wavy before, but only when it was longer. I had no idea what might happen when it was above my shoulders. So I got out my curling gel and scrunched it when wet and let it air dry…and I loved the result! Though I had curls as a toddler, my hair is definitely not curly now…but it’s solidly wavy, and it felt beachy and summery and fun. I kept wearing it like that all through the last year!

9. Bye-Bye, Vega

In our family, we name our cars. I totally started it with my very first cars, reasoning that if people named their horses, why not our vehicles? They’re pretty important to us, right? My first car was Snowball, though we sold her pretty quickly and got Sparky instead. I named my husband’s Jeep Bartok, and the first car we bought together was Xander. Our Mazda is Zipporah–which our daughter named. So when we got her a car, she obviously had to name it. It was a silver Toyota Corolla (hard car to spot in a parking lot! There are SO MANY of them!), so she decided to embrace that silver-like-the-stars idea and named it Vega.

Well, poor Vega got smashed. In February, a horrible wind storm came through and knocked down eight different trees on our property, three of which did the domino-effect right onto the roof of Vega. They also took out our power lines and a pole. We had downed live wires, our driveway was completely blocked off…it was exciting. This of course happened in the middle of the night, but by morning, the power company had restored the electrical lines. Poor Vega, though, was totaled.

Xoe was at college when it happened, so we had to call her with the bad news. The funny thing is that nearly all her friends are city people, so when she told them “A tree fell on my car!” they were utterly confused as to how this happened. She had to explain that we live in the middle of a forest, LOL.

10. Hello, Antigone

So of course, we had to hunt for a new car for Xoe. This was a long process, which nearly drove my husband to obsessive-distraction. 😉 After much ado, we finally bought her an old Lexus in a beautiful deep metallic purple called “Black Garnet Pearl.” And I gotta say, after driving it a few times, I declared that I could totally be a Lexus person. Even a twenty-year-old one is just so comfy and smooth and luxurious.

Xoe, deep in her year of Ancient Greek Everything at St. John’s, decided that this lovely car would be named Antigone. And so she is. =)

11. ECPA Bestseller

Hilariously, the same day we bought this car for Xoe, I got news that A Noble Scheme had hit the ECPA Bestseller list for March. My best friend thought it totally hilarious that I hit the bestseller list and bought a Lexus on the same day. So glamorous! 😉 I’ve been on the list before, but not with a new release, so this was a nice surprise. I’ll admit I’d begun to think I would simply never get on the list with a new release–and have given myself many a pep talk about it, full of things like, “Your sales numbers are fine. The fact that they don’t all come in that one month is no big deal.” Which is true. But it was still fun to finally see my book there. =)

12. Kaizen Pasta

I love pasta. I also love how I feel when I’m not eating a ton of carbs. So I’m always on the lookout for alternatives…and I am often horrified by the ones I try (like anything with konjac. It’s absolutely, 100% disgusting in my opinion, LOL). I saw an add for Kaizen pasta and rice, which uses lupini beans as its foundation, so decided to give it a try. And I really like it! It doesn’t quite have the texture and bite of semolina pasta, but it’s very reminiscent of whole grain varieties, and works great in a dish that has other stuff in it too, like veggies and meat. I bought quite a few boxes of it!

13. Changing Publishers

One of the biggest things for me professionally in the last year happened between September and November. After Bethany House passed on a stand-alone novel I pitched to them, my agent submitted the proposal elsewhere. This was the first time in a decade I’ve had anything out on submission, and I’d forgotten how nerve-wracking it could be! But the circumstances required it, and conflicted as I was at the thought of leaving the publishing home I’d been at for a decade, whose team I absolutely adore, I knew this was part of God’s plan. Especially when, half an hour after submitting to Tyndale, we had a very eager response to start chatting. Within a week, I was on a Zoom call with an editor; within three weeks, my proposal had gone to committee. And while I was in Pensacola on my writing retreat, I got the good news that Tyndale not only wanted to buy that stand-alone I’d submitted, they wanted three World War 2 novels and two novellas from me.

My agent was pretty amazed that we pitched one book and sold five, LOL, but it was confirmation to me that this was the path the Lord had prepared for me, and I felt total peace as we accepted the offer. It was sad to give the news to my Bethany House team and know that the Imposters would be my last series with them for a while, but I have loved getting to know the team at Tyndale and have been made to feel so very welcome there! We’re deep in the editorial process for that book, and I am loving working with them. As for the book…

14. My First World War 2 Novel!

When I wrote Yesterday’s Tides, I delved for the first time into WW2, but only in half the book. Still, the research I did for it gave me lots of ideas for other books set in the 1940s. My favorite revolved around a library in Paris founded by exiled German writers in the 1930s–the writers whose books had been burned and banned in Nazi Germany. They founded The Library of Burned Books in 1933 (and a second followed shortly thereafter in New York)…and when the Nazis took Paris, the first thing the Parisian government did was hand over the keys to this library. It was “kept under lock and key” by the Nazis throughout the war, which I found so intriguing. Especially as I learned that nearly all of Paris’s libraries were dismantled during the war–valuable books were sent back to Germany, forbidden books were confiscated and burned or at least stamped with a V for Verboten (forbidden), and some libraries were completely destroyed. So why did they just guard this one? I wanted to explore that, so I paired a French heroine who had been using the books in a fledgling espionage network with a German professor forced into service by the Nazis and sent to Paris to do this work in the libraries–a professor with secrets he can never let the Nazis discover.

I had been calling this novel The Library of Burned Books, but because there are other books out there with similar titles, we’ve retitled it to The Collector of Burned Books. And I am so, so excited to share this story with you all!! While a new setting with a plot that completely stands alone, my dedicated readers will nevertheless see some familiar faces. (Georgie, anyone? Anyone? And did anyone wonder if perhaps Rem’s brother Sebastian didn’t die in that mud??) It will release from Tyndale in Summer 2025!

15. New Desk and Office…Sort Of

How to comfort myself when my firstborn baby goes off to college? Obviously by doing what parents have been doing for generations–taking over her room while she’s away. 😉 I have long wished for an office that wasn’t just the kitchen, and when Xoe went off to Annapolis, I moved to her room and its HUGE desk. Now, I didn’t take a lot back there, so that whenever she comes home for weekends or breaks, it’s a simple matter of clearing out of her way again. But I’ll admit I love being able to spread out and actually be able to fit my laptop and my Wacom tablet for design work and the mouse and my coffee cup on the desk all at the same time. (Especially useful since half the time the cat is also there, and she takes up literally a third of my small in-kitchen desk, LOL.)

I even rearranged the attached bookshelf to make it pretty for photos and videos. =)

16. TikTok

Speaking of videos…I joined TikTok in January! I’d been thinking for a while that I wanted to try it out, but my old phone had neither the memory for one more app nor a camera capable of good video. So I got a new one (Yay! No more memory errors every other day!) and took the plunge.

I will admit that I have not set the world on fire over there. 😉 And I totally let it slip after my diagnosis (see the next entry). But I’m learning the ropes, anyway, and enjoying it. If you’re on TikTok, you can find me @roseannamwhite (https://www.tiktok.com/@roseannamwhite)

17. Cancer

This is, of course, the biggest event of my year. In March, an incredibly painful lump popped up in my right breast. I went to the doctor, who suggested a mammo and ultrasound, though she thought it was most likely a cyst. The scan results showed something, but they weren’t sure what, so a biopsy was ordered. After a two-week delay in getting the results, they confirmed that it was breast cancer (by this time, it was mid April). Being the novelist that I am, I had already played out every possible plot twist as I awaited results, so when my doctor delivered the news, I wasn’t surprised (unlike my poor husband), and I didn’t feel unprepared or afraid. My thought was honestly, “Okay, God. This is the plot you’ve chosen for me. Let’s see where you take me with it and what you do with it.”

From there, everything happened so fast! I had appointments with a surgeon and oncologist within a week, scans left and right, and treatment began in early May. It was staged at 2/3 due to size and axilla node involvement, which meant chemo, then surgery and radiation. As of now, I’m still in the chemo, coming up on my final infusion (of 6). And though this isn’t the plot twist I would have chosen (I mean, for me–I’d totally subject a character to it, LOL), it has honestly been such an amazing experience in so many ways. The outpouring of encouragement and support has left me astounded and so, so grateful to be part of the family of God. I’ve only had a few passing moments of fear. And though there’s been plenty of feeling-sick and constant exhaustion, my heart and soul know only peace and assurance. I haven’t even had to cling to His hand–I just know I’m there, sheltered in his palm.

18. Wigs

My cancer is HER2 positive, hormone negative, which means I’m on TCHP chemotherapy. This type of treatment does not guarantee hair loss–only about 50% of women experience it, and for some, it’s not total. I held out hope…but alas. Two weeks after my first treatment, the hair started falling out, and within 48 hours, I’d lost about half of it. I decided that was enough (bald spots! NOPE!), and Xoe helped me shave the rest off. Which, of course, meant it was time to have fun with wigs! Because if I’m going to go through this, I am going to have fun with it. 😉 I ordered a long red one. A wavy purple one. A blonde one that I’d hoped would look like my natural hair (but which totally doesn’t). Friends sent a short blond one, and a short brown one.

I can honestly say that the red is my favorite–I can’t believe how well it suits my complexion! And it’s the most comfortable of them all. But the purple one is such fun! Which one is your favorite?

19. Scarves

But wigs aren’t that comfortable, so when at home or on days when I don’t feel like dealing with it, I do scarves or a little chemo cap with a fun flower. I had quite a scarf collection already, and I bought a pack of 16 solid colors, so I have something for every outfit.

20. Keto for Lent

This list is SO in random order, LOL. Backtracking to the new year…I decided that I wanted to keto for Lent this year, but I actually started it in mid-January, because I was so over-sugared after the holidays that I just couldn’t take it. 😉 It felt great to get back to low carbs for a while…though I was hoping it would also help my energy levels like it had before, and that was a disappointment. Of course, when I learned I had cancer, that explained the pervasive fatigue, so I didn’t hold it against keto. 😉 I did stop doing it after Easter, and with the diagnosis, I’m pretty much just eating what tastes good (chemo totally messes up your taste buds!), but I really like the discipline of it for Lent!

21. New Laptop ~ Clio

I hadn’t planned on needing a new laptop–the one I’d been using was only a year old. But it began to experience some serious bugs when I was running the Adobe Suite, making it clear that it wasn’t going to last long. The keyboard stopped working, and it kept shutting itself off when I was in the middle of work. So we decided to go back The Workhorse–a Lenovo ThinkPad. I know this machine will last me years, and it’s souped up enough to run my graphics-heavy design programs.

One thing I love about setting up a Windows computer these days is that it asks you to name it. Having already read my propensity to name cars, you shouldn’t be surprised that this makes me grin. But for some reason, I’d always just given generic names to my previous computers. Things like “red laptop” or “HP.” Not this time, though! I decided I would start naming my computers after the Muses. This new one has been dubbed Clio, one of the muses specializing in stories and the written word. =)

22. Melaleuca

Here’s the thing. I like using products, both for my home and body, that are wholesome and healthy and absent harsh chemicals. But I also don’t have a lot of brain space to give selecting these things, so I like it when I can find a company who I can simply trust to provide. I like it especially when the products are normal prices. So when a friend introduced me to Melaleuca, I breathed a sigh of relief. It’s a membership company, where you have to order a certain amount a month…but that’s fine, because I need those products, and I know I can trust the ones they provide. I’m very glad to have been introduced to them and have thus far loved everything I’ve tried!

23. Sprayed Edges

One of my goals for 2024 was to find new ways to take joy in books, and one of the ways I found to do it was to make the books in my library beautiful. Something I ADORE about the fantasy book world is all the special editions with fancy covers and (gasp) sprayed edges. SO PRETTY!! Of course, being me, I decided I’d like to learn how to do it rather than just spend money on those publisher-produced special editions. So I bought some clamps, some spray paint, a Cricut to cut out my stencils…and there we go! Painted edges! They may not be as intricate and artsy as some of the very talented people using airbrush and so on…but it’s made me happy, anyway!

24. Pacas

I admit it. I get sucked into Facebook ads all…the…time. And last autumn, I was totally enamored by an ad for socks I saw whose tagline was “softer than cashmere, warmer than wool.” I’ve knit with alpaca wool before and love it, so I was immediately all “Ooooo, me wanty!” over these socks. David wanted to get me a multi-pack from Pacas for Christmas, but they were out of the color scheme I wanted (purple–duh), so we just kept checking back. FINALLY in the spring, the purple pack was back, so we ordered them. I love them, guys. They’re thick and cushy but not TOO thick, so soft, and definitely warm. (Which, when one spends one’s day in front of an air conditioning vent in the kitchen, is important even in the spring and summer!) Highly recommend!

25. Protector

“This is the best book I’ve read in a long time. It’s…perfect.” I don’t say those words lightly, but I said them a few months ago after reading Protector by Megan Schaulis. This book is a dystopian Esther retelling and, friends, it hits ALL the notes. We’ve got a Hunger Games style competition, we’ve got royal themes, we’ve got a heroine with a unique relationship to God, we’ve got unlikely friendships and romance…it’s just GAH. So perfect! Go read it. Now. You’re welcome.

26. Reading Goals

In 2023, I had a very vague goal of wanting to read 50 books by the end of the year. I ended up with 54, 75% of which were in audio format. For 2024, I wanted to get back to reading more physical books (see the next one) and I wanted to set a more ambitious goal. So my 2024 reading goal is 100 books…and though I can’t yet report on it fully, so far I’m on track! I’m using an app called StoryGraph to help me track it.

27. The Art of Sitting Down

I don’t do well with idleness. I’m one of those people who likes to be doing something active, which is why audio books have been great for me. I’d listen while I do chores or exercise or drive. But I’d begun to notice something I didn’t like so much–that I couldn’t sit down and read. I felt like I had to pop up every fifteen minutes to do something.

Not cool, y’all. Not cool. Reading has always been one of My Things, so this new restlessness wasn’t something I wanted to ignore. I decided that I would retrain myself to just sit and read…and I have. It took a few weeks, but I am happy to report that I can once again curl up with a good book and enjoy myself. Not to say I don’t still love audio books! But especially as cancer left me wiped out, this rediscovered skill has been a blessing.

28. Encouragement Bombs

I have the most awesome friends and family in the world, pretty sure. I was overwhelmed in the best way at the outpouring of love and support surrounding my diagnosis and as I began cancer treatments, which I’ve said many times. But one of the most amazing things is what I’m calling “Encouragement Bombs.” My P&P ladies began sending me things to arrive on or around chemo infusion days–each thing signed “From your P&P sisters, via…” whomever popped it into the mail. Sometimes it’s boxes of goodies, sometimes it’s a beautiful card. Always, it just fills my heart with so much gratitude to see the pile of encouragement literally delivered to me on those hard weeks. And we’ve done it for other P&P members too, which is when I realized these “bombs” were very much planned and yet left up to the individual. I don’t know if there’s a real name for it, but I’m going to keep calling them this!

29. Meal Train

I am admittedly behind the times in some things. When my sister asked how she could help through my treatments, I said “food” was an easy one to delegate–I was already so tired by the time I was diagnosed that I rarely cooked. And my sister LOVES the whole meal-prep thing. She decided to organize a meal train…and soon learned there was an actual Meal Train, a site that would manage it all, including donations of gift cards and just straight-up donations. She got this set up for me, and oh my gracious. Most of my friends aren’t local, so the actual sign-ups for meals have been few, but you all have blessed my socks off with gift cards and monetary donations. Through this, my out-of-pocket medical costs are being covered, and we don’t have to stress about all the times we need to buy gas or food while we’re driving for treatments or scans or just too tired to cook. Big thanks to everyone who has used this to pitch in!! I think I’ve said, “People are so kind. They are just so…awesome” about a million times at this point.

30. Prayer Gardening

I am not a gardener. Full stop. But after my diagnosis, the amazing Cathy Gohlke reached out to encourage me (she had her own cancer journey several years ago), and she told me that she does “prayer gardening.” She will dedicate each plant to a person or a particular need and then, whenever she’s tending that plant, she prays for that specific intention. She went on to say she’d just planted a new rose, an Agatha Christie rose, and she had dedicated it to me.

Y’all…I love this SO MUCH. If ever I take up gardening, I want to do this! And the fact that she dedicated a rose (my favorite flower) to me which is named after an author? Yep. Gives me all the warm fuzzies! (She sent a photo when it bloomed, too!!)

 31. Zero Sugar Honey

We love honey. Particularly when combined with peanut butter. But when you’re on a low-sugar diet…well, despite not being processed cane sugar, it’s still sugar. But happily, there are zero sugar alternatives out there! Did you know that?? We’ve tried both ChocZero and WholesomeYum brands, and our favorite is actually the orange flavor of WholesomeYum. So tasty!! (And it somehow still works with peanut butter. That kick of orange just adds a little unexpected something.) If you’re looking for a low-carb alternative but love that honey taste, these are actually a really great alternative! Texture and consistency is spot-on, and given the wide variation of flavors in natural honeys, these fit nicely in the family! (They’re made from a monk fruit and allulose blend, both of which are derived from plants so are all natural.)

32. Comfy deck chairs

David and I enjoy sitting on the deck in the evenings when the weather is fair…but we had metal decorative chairs, and you know what isn’t comfortable? Metal decorative chairs, LOL. They came with the house, what can I say? But we’d been talking for the last couple years about wanting more comfy options, and my MIL got us some for Christmas! Yay!!

33. Patrons & Peers Creative Retreat in OBX!

In October, the P&P ladies joined me for our second annual creative retreat…and this time we met up in one of my favorite places on earth–the Outer Banks of North Carolina! We rented a big ol’ beach house in Rodanthe and enjoyed a whole week of writing, sewing, reading, art-ing, relaxing, beaching, and chatting. It was SO MUCH FUN!! Of course, my family had to drive through flooded roads (sketchy!) to get there, but the water had receded by the time the others arrived. And then I discovered that I hadn’t rented linens, so there was a bit of panic, during which David said I was officially fired from the planning of these, not because I made mistakes but because I turned into a crazy person when I realized it, LOL. So another member appointed herself as planner of future retreats, and I most happily turned over the reins. Mostly, I just LOVE this time spent with some of the women who have become a daily part of my life and such dear friends and sisters!

34. Slack

WhiteFire joined Slack this year, and while at first I thought I didn’t want “one more thing”…in truth, it has been AWESOME to have a work space where we can all be for instant communication! The staff loved it so much that we started a group for our authors too, so we can also communicate directly with them there!

35. MidJourney

One of the BIGGEST boons to my year has to be MidJourney, an AI image generator. I absolutely love what I can create on this platform! I did character images, which was super fun…but I also use it in my design work. Instead of spending hours crafting an image with a dozen stock photos all meshed together to get that image that just doesn’t otherwise exist, I can now spend minutes crafting a prompt and editing the image that MidJourney creates. Of course AI is imperfect…but you know what? It’s a tool I’m loving because it helps me create better art faster in many cases!

36. Adoration

Adoration is one of those things that I’d never heard of before joining the Catholic church but which I now love. What is it? It’s when a blessed communion wafer is displayed (in something called a monstrance) at the front of the church, and you can just come in during the time and be there in the presence of Jesus, focusing your eyes on Him, on the gift He gave us to partake of Him. We’ve only been a couple times, but each was a real blessing. Our parish does Adoration the first Friday of each month, and last month, it was just such a sweet time of mediating on His love for us that I was sniffing back tears and basking in a new level of peace.

37. Popular Books

Given that most of my reading over the last two decades has been in the Christian realm, I only rarely know all the “big books” that people at large talk about. But this last year, I’ve been listening to a lot of audio books in the general market (because my library’s selection of Christian fiction audio books is slim pickings), and it’s been fun not only to read more broadly, but also to look at lists of the most borrowed books of the year nationwide and realize that I’ve read most of them! For an author, keeping one’s finger on the pulse of what’s resonating with readers all over the country is so helpful, especially since the Christian market tends to be about two years behind the mainstream market in trends. So I can incorporate aspects that are appealing, but of course put them in faith-filled stories.

Some of my favorite discoveries this last year have been Emily Henry (I’ve enjoyed all of them that I’ve read–which was most of her backlist, but Book Lovers remains my favorite), Colleen Hoover, and Fourth Wing and Iron Flame.

38. Morgantown

In my area, it’s just a fact that you have to drive to get to good healthcare, good shopping, airports…pretty much anything. When I was diagnosed with cancer, I knew I’d have to go out of town, and I debated on whether to go southeast toward Baltimore and D.C., or northwest toward Morgantown WV and Pittsburgh. Since I already see an endocrinologist in Morgantown, and because I didn’t feel like fighting with metro traffic regularly, we decided on Morgantown.

I’ll admit it. I haven’t been a Morgantown fan in general in the past. It’s the home of West Virginia University, which is big and crowded and not my cup of tea as colleges go; but the town is, of course, built around it. As we’re visiting regularly for my treatments and appointments, however, I’m coming to appreciate all we can find there–and especially the medical teams. I am so impressed by how cheerful and caring everyone has been! It’s so refreshing to be surrounded by knowledgeable, professional, caring staff. I’m so glad we made the choice we did!

39. Bookshelf Quilt!

In mid-July, I saw a post by an author friend showing a gorgeous quilt her friend had made her, made to look like a bookshelf with all her books on it. How cool is that? Well, little did I know that Deanna, one of the quilters in my P&P group, was already at work on one for me! And as it happens, she brought it to me as a surprise literally days after I saw that post and thought, “Wow, how amazing is that!” (Answer: SO AMAZING!)

Apparently as soon as I was diagnosed, Deanna and the other P&P ladies began scheming and decided it was something that must be created, so they decided how it should be. So not only do the books on the shelves have all my titles…but there are also books with the names of all my P&P members! I LOVE THAT SO MUCH! Not only do I get to snuggle up with the books I’ve written, but with the group of amazing ladies who have become such an integral part of my life.

(I tried to get Lilly to sit on the quilted cat for the photo, but she had no interest in helping me out. She snuggled up and napped on the shelves right away though, LOL.)

40. Wrapped Door

For Christmas, I randomly decided to wrap the pantry door in my kitchen. I chose a red paper with silver snowflakes on it, and I just loved it so much that I left it up, er…way too long, LOL. It was May before I finally thought, “Okay, fine, it’s time to take that off,” but I didn’t want to give up the fun of a design on my pantry door, so I ordered some printed canvas from Jo-Ann Fabric, and David and Rowyn helped me take the door off, wrap it, and rehang it.

41. Travel…or Not

It was supposed to be a spring and summer with lots of travel. I should have taught at conferences in Chicago in May and Oregon in June; I should have had a writing retreat coming up in September and a P&P retreat in October. I had been looking at vacations to book for June…right when I received my diagnosis. Not surprisingly, everything got cancelled and/or rescheduled. In general that was fine, because there’s only so much my brain can really handle right now, and taking pressure off was welcome. But I also missed the promise of visiting with friends, and of course a week at the beach–which is totally our happy place. Our beach vacations are where we unwind, relax, and dream. So given the lack of summer travel, I’ve booked us a vacation for December instead. We had to go really far south to get good beach weather that late in the year, of course, so we’ll be trying out the Florida Keys, in Marathon. I shall report later on how lovely it is in person, but the photos have TOTALLY given us all something to look forward to! (And happily, my oncologist gave me enthusiastic approval for traveling in September to my writing retreat with Stephanie, so I’ll get to do that too!)

42. I’m young!

With a daughter in college and a son determined to graduate high school a year early this coming year, I definitely don’t feel as young as I used to. But I’ve been stating my birthday an awful lot with all the medical stuff going on this year, and I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard “You’re so young!” Now, granted, mostly that’s “You’re so young to be dealing with breast cancer!” But even so, it’s good to hear. 😉 It’s also nice to hear, as they ask about my family and I tell them how old my kids are, “Oh my goodness, you don’t look old enough to have kids that age! I thought you were thirty.” A lovely boost to the ego, LOL. So, of course, something to remind myself of as I welcome in a new year of life.

As tired as I’ve been this last half-year, young isn’t always how I’ve felt. Given the national average life expectancy, I’m firmly middle-aged. But you know what? I still have so much life to live, so much ahead of me, so many dreams to chase, so many stories to write, so many adventures to go on…and I am still young! Young enough to thoroughly enjoy the next chapters of my story, whatever they may be. And determined to always be young enough for that, whatever my age!

All in all, 41 is a year I’ll never forget, given that big diagnosis and all it’s meant. But for all the challenges and side-effects that came with it, this has also been a year of more blessings than I can count, of seeing the world and the Church family in a new way. I’m closing out 41 feeling so extraordinarily blessed and content and full of joyful expectation for what’s to come. Maybe this isn’t how I would have written my own story…but it’s how God is writing it, and I trust my Author wholeheartedly. I know he’ll lead me into 42 and will have new things to show me and teach me, and I can’t wait to see what they are!